Republic push must be renewed: Dreyfus

Times are dark for Australia's republican movement but supporters of the cause should not become complacent, shadow attorney-general Mark Dreyfus says.

In his address to an Australian Republican Movement forum, Mr Dreyfus says Prime Minister Tony Abbott's resurrection of knights and dames is absurd and shows he is out of touch with modern, multicultural Australia.

"Times are dark for republicans," Mr Dreyfus says in his speech to the Victorian branch on Sunday.

"Tony Abbott's full-blooded monarchism might be half a century out of date, but we must not be lulled into complacency.

"How could any Australian in 2014 honestly argue for the place of the British monarchy in our modern society?"

Mr Dreyfus said Britishness is no longer the defining feature of the Australian national identity.

Waves of migrants from different cultures and closer economic and cultural ties with our region had fundamentally changed the nation, he said.